2017 was an explosive year for digital transformation and cybersecurity. With cyber threats sprouting left and right, cybersecurity experts and professionals are all on their guard while trying to anticipate the next attacks. Amongst all the trends, one idea surfaced: you can’t really protect everything equally. According to Earl Perkins, Vice President at Gartner, experts must focus not on protecting entire company but just the crucial parts of it.

Everything can’t be fixed

The key is to not get them broken in the first place

In a world where 100% security is the selling point, one key truth is crucial to fully understand the limits and capabilities of cybersecurity systems: not everything can be fixed. There are some scenarios wherein a fix is just not the option. The early phases of WannaCry exhibited this the best. At its first period, virtually no one found a fix and any attempt in doing so resulted into files forever banished in the encrypted realm.

All solutions didn’t work except for one: having back-ups. When the threat revolves around fully destroying your file, the way to counter it is to not counter it at all; instead, rely on a robust backup system. It may corrupt one copy but if you have thousands of it stored safely in cloud platforms like Azure, then encryption attacks like WannaCry won’t even put a dent in your overall cybersecurity posture.

This train of thought is apparently spreading more and more as the year reaches its end with a cloud adoption rate rising at almost triple than what it was last year. This further proves that solutions with a strong cloud backup support (like Enadoc and Office 365 on Azure) are the keys in surviving unfixable threats.

You can’t make assets fully secure

You can’t lock them all

You can try but it probably won’t work. Trying to achieve 100% security on all your assets is pretty much the dream, but most of the time it just stays as that… dream. “Take the money you’re spending on prevention and begin to drive it more equitably to detection and response,” said Mr. Perkins.

Why you ask? Because the trends are fickle and attackers are always working on how to surprise you. Unlike natural threats that endanger your files like flood or fire, cyberattacks has an element of flexibility in the form of the hackers. They continuously innovate as much as the countermeasures they are trying to surpass.

You can’t know how secure your digital partners are

Be observant but not isolated

As much as you want to ensure your own company’s cybersecurity posture, there’s no surefire way to do so when you are involved in many relationships across many companies. Each new partnership presents a new avenue for cyber threats. Of course, not having a partner is not an option for obvious reasons. What can we do then?

One word: Solutions.

Invest in the technology that tracks, secures, and filters data that goes in and out of your company. This can be done through efficient productivity solutions like Enadoc for your document scanning needs and Office 365 that bundles all of Microsoft’s latest productivity apps (along with classics like Word and Excel under one umbrella). The best part? All of these solutions can be safely integrated with the Azure platform. It gives you the power to be fully in control of your company’s cybersecurity framework.

Digital transformation will continue getting bigger and wilder as the year turns. We at Tech One Global are here to help you keep up in these changing times. Don’t forget to subscribe to us to keep yourself updated with anything cybersecurity.